EV updates!

Hello, Reader-land! I hope you are well. I am eager to share this latest post as the next EV post will be the reveal! I want to take you on my journey of this process, and share with you the wonderful people who built and supported this! We begin, as these things do, in an exam room, where the Physical Therapist (who has a Chi Rho tattooed on his wrist) is examining me, after having been diagnosed with ALS. I could still talk, then, and I joked that I didn’t want a slow wheelchair. This led to hours and hours of research about wheelchairs, and batteries, and materials, which eventually led to learning that no one makes what I wanted.

Not letting this get me down, I began calling and emailing everyone who I thought could be of help, car manufacturers, bike manufacturers, wheelchair manufacturers, almost all didn’t respond at all, and the ones who did were encouraging, but unable or unwilling to help. Months went by. At this point, family stepped in.

Jack Z, family of family, built and restored several cars and racecars. He offered to build it for me. And so it began.

I first thought about buying everything in parts, then quickly realized that we had to tear apart what we wanted and repurpose it. Across the pond I found on eBay a complete chair, a quickie f55 that they only made for Europe. But the seller wouldn’t ship to the US!

Luckily, my friend and coworker Rick lives over there, with his lovely family, and over the course of a month was able to take the local delivery, and help me coordinate the shipping to the US. I am not going to say how much it cost, but shipping was much, much more expensive than the chair itself. Painfully so.

At last, it arrived, and Jack tore into it, getting down to metal, building the battery box, and footplate, moving faster than I had envisioned, and we hit a huge stumbling block. Me. I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t sure what electronic components to purchase, I had no batteries, I was a disaster. So the engineers took over. Jack talked with Timmy of Convenience Tire and Auto, my go to mechanics and all around great guy, they talked to Henry, Jack’s brother in law, enlisted the help of Scott, and before I knew it, the experts had the EV sorted out. My contributions to this project have been nothing.

So, before I show the pictures, I wish to thank from the bottom of my heart, Andy, Joey, Jack, Timmy, Scott, Henry, Tony, Richard, Rick, the Zedeks, Lynn, Tim, and your families for putting up with it, and most of all Mel, who has watched me obsess over tires, or shifters, or paint colors, and is going through so much of her own stuff, and never holding it against me. Thank you all. I appreciate you so much!